Hello. This started happening a few weeks ago. I’ve tried everything except connecting my play deviced with cable because they are too far from my router. Anyway, everything was fine before and I could stream HD 3D movies 15Mbps without any problem.
I’ve tried buying powerline, reverting to ethernet (from router to PC)… nothing.
I didn’t change anything, all of a sudden it started buffering every 2-10 seconds both on my LG smart TV and PS4. I’ve also tried lowering the bitrate, but it didn’t help.
Please help, I can’t see anything anymore. Thanks.
EDIT: If it can be useful, I’ve attached the verbose Plex Media Server log (compressed with WinRar).
It would really help if you tried plugging it with ethernet, at least temporarily. My guess is one of your neighbors is causing wifi interference, and you need to change your wifi channel in your router.
You can see what channels are being used around you with the android app “wifi analyzer”
Hello and first of all thank you for your answer. I already did check the wi-fi and noone is interfering. It’s full stars on Wifi analyzer. Actually, if you see the logs, randomly transcoder speed drops to 0.8 and I don’t know why. So it’s server related. Fact is I never had this problem before. I’ve tried tampering with options, but nothing works.
I think it started when I replaced the Ethernet from the router to the PC/server with a new and costly powerline. Then, since I thought that was the problem, I changed back to Ethernet but buffering still happens.
Hi spike and first of all thank you for the answer.
As I wrote, I already reverted back to Ethernet because I thought the problem was caused by powerline.
Before I had this issue, wifi always worked like a charm and I did not change anything. Also, the problem seems to be server side as the log suggests.
The last thing that remains now is to uninstall Plex and reinstall it.
If speed is 0.8 in the logs then it’s a matter of your cpu not being powerful enough to transcode your file in realtime. Perhaps your other 15Mbps were compatible with your client and didn’t need a transcode…
You can either use Plex optimizer to make it compatible, or handbrake, or get a better cpu.
But how is it possible that I used Plex everyday for the last 3 years without having a problem?
I think my CPU is powerful enough, being an Intel i7-2600k 38-core 3.70GhZ.
I don't have Plex Pass, so I can't turn on hardware acceleration.
This all started when I tried using a powerline from my pc to the router. Since I thought that was a problem, I reverted back to Ethernet but nothing changed. Anyway, it may be that my switch to powerline coincided with a Plex upgrade.
Thanks again!
Another point to note is network bandwidth. Everything that you connect to your network will call out every so often saying it is alive and looking for others. Some of the worst offenders of beating down the bandwidth of the network are IP cameras. If you installed a few of these that will cause congestion in the network.
Added note: At this time; Powerline should only be used as a last ditch effort.
This is the fact, actually. I did not add any device (and I don’t
have any camera). All I did was TRYING with an expensive powerline
and then get back to Ethernet. Before it worked like a charm,
after… it doesn’t anymore. So I really can’t understand why.
Anyway, thanks for the advices.
Only thing I can imagine is your files are not the same codec as the previous ones. Are you playing back HEVC/h265 files? Vc1 files? In h264 there is a “level”, level 4.0 and 4.1 are widely played back, but if your files are anything above it could cause issues…
I would try taking everything offline beyond the Plex server and your intended device and go from there. Other option is checking out the packets that are going over the network but that is highly technical. You also want to make sure your Ethernet card(if that is what you are using now) is set to auto negotiate. Tons of things could have happened but this will give you a jump start.
I would also ensure everything is up to date from windows to your version of PLEX. Anti-virus is off, ect… If that doesnt get it try downgrading your streams until you have something stable and start adding things back to the network/Increasing quality.
